Today we had our eternal captain Louise Nielsen visiting us. She was planning on playing with us but unfortunately she did not have cleats of her size. you know, Louise has baby feet, size 36. Emma offered her sister’s (a 6th grader) cleats but it was size 39 so it was a no go.

First half of the practice we had 10 players only. Bella still recovering and Suh-Young had a stomach flu so she went home to rest. Besides that, Inês had extra class of Biology and Mikayla had to film something for her boring Film Making class.

I assigned a drill where in pairs they had to pass to each other. In a triangle formed by the cones, one stands in the top vertex passing while the other has to run to the other two cones and pass without trapping. This is to help speeding up passing so we don’t waste precious time trapping the ball when it’s not needed. Some people have solid passing, others definitely needs to improve. Dominating the passing skill will make our team much stronger and united, not depending of one person in specific.

After that, we did the overlapping drill, where the center midfield alternates passes with one of the wings and has to sprint passing the defender. That one was very productive, I think. Now we need to transport those drills to the match.

After those two drills, we had a one-hour scrimmage. Yellow team was Mikayla as goalie, Phoebe and Tehillah as defenders, Inês center midfield, Alice on the right and Kyra on the left. Franziska as striker. The red team was Juni (thanks for the help! ) as goalie, Greta and Emma as defenders, me as center midfield, Hailey as striker, Alva on the right and Sinead on the left. What made me very happy was to see that both teams were very balanced. First half ended 3 x 3 with both teams playing well but still not fully applying what we actually had in the drills.

The second half was a bit disastrous. Franziska alone slipped and, at the same time, twisted her ankle and knee. I bet it was very painful since normally she is not a complainer. Me and her stepped out of the match and Greta kindly went to the nurse and got ice for Franziska.

I am happy this week we will finally have decent time to practice. We have four more matches to go and two of those against traditionally strong teams (YCIS and German School). Tomorrow I have a special practice of one hour to fine tune our attack. I hope it works as planned.